More Articles

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court held yesterday that the CIA must disclose, at least to a
judge, a description of its records on drone strikes in response to a Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The 19-page opinion by Judge Merrick B. Garland rejected an effort by the Obama administration
to keep secret any aspect of the agency’s interest in the use of drone strikes to kill terrorism
suspects abroad.

It doesn’t mean the contents of any of those records will ever be made public. It also stopped
short of ordering the government to publicly acknowledge that the CIA actually uses drones to carry
out “targeted killings” against specific terrorism suspects or unknown people who appear to be
militants in places like tribal Pakistan. The Obama administration continues to treat that fact as
a classified secret, though it has been widely reported.

Garland cited public remarks by a former CIA director and other top officials about what they
asserted was the precision and minimal civilian casualties caused by drone strikes. “As it is now
clear that the agency does have an interest in drone strikes, it beggars belief that it does not
also have documents relating to the subject,” the judge wrote.

The CIA had urged a district court judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it should not be
required to produce even an index of the relevant documents in its possession because it would harm
national security even to confirm or deny whether it had an interest in such operations.

The judge, Rosemary Collyer, had accepted that argument and rejected the ACLU’s case, but
yesterday’s ruling sends the case back to her. It remains to be seen how detailed and public she
will require the agency to be now that it must at least describe its records.

Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the ACLU who argued the case before the appeals court in September,
called the ruling “an important victory” that “requires the government to retire the absurd claim
that the CIA’s interest in the targeted killing program is a secret.”

Pressure has been mounting on the Obama administration to disclose more information to Congress
and the public about its use of drones, and its killing of three Americans in Yemen in 2011,
including the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

In recent weeks, the administration has provided several legal memorandums about the killing of
U.S. citizens to the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of its effort to get John O. Brennan
confirmed as CIA director. Last week, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., led a nearly 13-hour filibuster to
denounce the administration’s drone policies and the secrecy surrounding the scope and limits of
its power to kill.